At 78 years old, Donald Trump is too old to work in government, according to a new poll.
It was conducted on Monday and Tuesday by Reuters and Ipsos from 1,241 U.S. adults nationwide, including 1,018 registered voters; 53 percent agreed with the statement that Donald Trump is too old to work in government, while some 43 percent disagreed with it. Newsweek has contacted the Trump campaign for comment via email.
Fifty-six percent of those polled agreed with the statement that Kamala Harris, 59, is “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges,” while 37 percent disagreed. Only 22 percent of voters assessed President Joe Biden that way. The poll had a 3 percent margin of error.
Biden, 81, announced on Sunday that he was ending his reelection campaign amid concerns about his age and health. He endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, as his replacement. Biden had been under pressure from Republicans and members of his own party to step down since his disastrous performance in the first presidential debate last month; he often stammered and failed to challenge attacks by Trump that included falsehoods.
Before that, Trump and his MAGA allies had frequently criticized Biden for his age and raised concerns about his cognitive ability, branding him “Sleepy Joe,” and saying that he “can’t put two sentences together and he’s in charge of nuclear warfare.”
However, following Biden’s announcement on Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson immediately seized on Democrats, saying that the GOP would challenge the party’s right to switch to Kamala Harris.
“I think they’ve got legal hurdles in some of these states,” Johnson told CNN on Sunday. “And it’ll be litigated, I would expect, on the ground there.”
Harris raised more than $100 million between Sunday afternoon and Monday evening for her campaign. She has also secured enough delegate support to clinch the Democratic nomination for the 2024 presidential race, according to a survey by The Associated Press.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll gave Harris a marginal 2-percentage-point lead over Trump, with 44 percent of those polled supporting her in a head-to-head with the Republican, while 42 percent backed the former president.
When voters in the survey were shown a hypothetical ballot that included independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Harris led Trump 42 percent to 38 percent, an advantage outside the margin of error.
Kennedy, favored by 8 percent of voters in the poll, has yet to qualify for the ballot in many states ahead of the November 5 election.
Harris and Trump were tied at 44 percent in a July 15 to 16 poll, and Trump led by 1 percentage point in a July 1 to 2 poll. Both polls had a 3 percent margin of error.
A pollster with Trump’s campaign played down any polling showing an increase in Harris’ support, saying that the vice president was likely to see a temporary rise in popularity because of widespread media coverage of her new candidacy.
“That bump is likely to start showing itself over the next few days and will last for a while,” pollster Tony Fabrizio said in a memo circulated to reporters by Trump’s campaign, Reuters reported.
A poll conducted by Morning Consult after Biden ended his reelection campaign showed Trump had a two-point lead over Harris, with 47 percent supporting the former president compared to 45 percent for Harris.
However, the poll also showed that Trump’s margin over the Democrats had decreased. The former president was now only two points ahead of Harris compared to a previous survey by the same pollsters conducted between July 15 and 17. It put Trump four points ahead of Biden, with 46 percent compared to the president’s 42 percent.
Morning Consult polled a representative sample of 4,001 registered voters, with an unweighted margin of error of +/- 2.
